Everything about Greg Louganis totally explained
}}
Gregory ("Greg") Louganis (born
January 29,
1960 in
El Cajon, California) is a
Greek American diver, who is best known for winning back-to-back
Olympic titles in both the 3m and 10m diving events. He received the
James E. Sullivan Award from the
Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in 1984 as the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States.
Diving career
At age 16, he took part in the
1976 Summer Olympics in
Montreal, where he placed second in the tower event, behind
Italian Klaus Dibiasi. Two years later, with Dibiasi retired, Louganis went on to win his first world title in the same event.
In 1978, he accepted a diving scholarship to the
University of Miami where he studied theater, but in
1981 transferred to the
University of California, Irvine, where he graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts.
Louganis is widely regarded as the greatest competitive diver of all time – his diving demonstrated an elegance, grace, fluidity, flamboyance, and consistency that has never been matched. The rise of the Chinese to dominance in the sport is in part attributable to Greg, as the Chinese coaches filmed and studied his performances assiduously, and built their national approach to diving on the mechanics they were able to discern in his technique, and upon their communications with leading coaches such as
Hobie Billingsley.
Olympic Games
Louganis was a favorite for two golds in the
1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. But an American
boycott of the games, instituted by U.S. President
Jimmy Carter, in protest of the
Soviet invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan, prevented him from participating.
Louganis won two world titles in 1982, and in the
1984 Los Angeles Olympics, with record scores and leads over his opponents, Louganis won gold medals in both the springboard and tower diving events.
After winning two more world championship titles in 1986, he repeated his 1984 feat in the
1988 Seoul Olympics, although not without difficulties. In what is considered one of the greatest feats in sporting history, Louganis suffered an injury, hitting his head on the diving board during the preliminary rounds while performing a reverse 2 1/2 pike; he completed the preliminaries, despite a concussion, then went on to repeat the dive during the finals, with nearly perfect scores, earning him the gold medal. His comeback earned him the title of
ABC's
Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year for 1988.
Post-diving and writing career
Louganis posed nude for
Playgirl magazine in 1987.
In 1994, Louganis announced he was
gay; he took part in the 1994
Gay Games as diving announcer, and performed an exhibition of several dives to a standing-room only crowd of nearly 3,000 spectators.
In 1995, Louganis's autobiography co-written with Eric Marcus, entitled
Breaking the Surface, was published. Louganis revealed publicly the
domestic abuse and
rape he suffered from a
live-in lover and that he was
HIV-positive. The announcement caused some controversy because of the belief, as expressed by then-
United States Olympic Committee executive director Dr.
Harvey Schiller, that he should have disclosed his HIV status during the 1988 Olympic games because his diving board injury resulted in light bleeding. Louganis had agonized over whether to disclose his status but was later advised by AIDS expert Dr.
Anthony Fauci that the injury posed no danger of infection to fellow competitors.
Following the announcement of his HIV status, Louganis was dropped by most of his corporate sponsors, with the exception of the aquatics gear manufacturer
Speedo, which continued to sponsor him as of 2007.
A 1997 made-for-television movie,
Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story, based on the book, starring
Mario López as Louganis.
In 1999, Louganis's second book,
For the Life of Your Dog (co-authored by Betsy Sikora Siino) was published.
Since retiring from competitive diving, Louganis has done some acting, most notably appearing in an
off-Broadway production of the
Paul Rudnick play
Jeffrey. As a hobby, he competes at the top level of
dog agility with his
Jack Russell Terriers. He is also the former boyfriend of former
E! television personality
Steve Kmetko.
Louganis was briefly mentioned in the 2005 hit film
The Longest Yard. The character Caretaker mentioned Greg whilst explaining Crewe's, another character, chances of winning a game of 1-on-1
Basketball with D.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Greg Louganis'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://greg_louganis.totallyexplained.com">Greg Louganis Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
